Weaving is an ancient art that has employed many different kinds of looms, looms ranging from simple hand held structures to complex floor mounted machines.
Perhaps one of the most common hand looms today is the loom that is used for weaving potholders from loops. This loom is a rigid loom, in the form of a square with projecting fingers designed to hold the warp loops and the woven weft loops. After weaving a holder, the ends of the loops are chained to one another to complete the article. A hand loom can be formed from a piece of cardboard cut or perforated on opposite edges to receive and hold warp threads. Inherent in the nature of the weaving process is the fact that as the weaving progresses, the tension in the warp threads will increase, or their span decrease, because of the increasing number of interwoven weft threads. This places increasing tension upon such a cardboard hand loom and can often result in a fold developing in the cardboard sheet, especially of continued handling required by the weaving process, the fold destroying the ability of the cardboard to maintain the warp threads reasonably taut. Even if such a fold does not develop, the process of removing the woven article from the loom usually destroys the edge of the cardboard, thus limiting the use of such a loom to a single article. In addition, because of the nature of such a loom, the slots holding the warp threads must be spaced a distance sufficient to retain adequate strength along the periphery of the cardboard sheet to hold the warp threads. Thus, usually such a loom is limited to at most four or six warp threads per inch.
Hand held looms could be ideal instruments for teaching the process of, and developing skill at, weaving. Were the limitations and difficulties, such as just noted, not present in such looms, they would afford an ideal teaching tool. Such a tool would permit the student to concentrate attention on the weaving process and experiment with variations and techniques without fear of destroying the loom or violating its structure. In addition, were such a loom also capable of being employed in knitting projects, it would not only increase significantly its usefulness but also provide a very valuable teaching too. Of course, hand held looms can be and should be quite inexpensive to permit them to be acquired by students and multiple looms used to hold various articles being woven without substantial investment in the loom structure.